Elections Don’t Make Israel a Democracy

by ARIEL GOLD

FacebookTwitterGoogle+ReddiEmaIt’s official, Israel is racing towards early elections. But no one is talking about who can vote in them.

New elections were nearly called in November 2017 after Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman resigned in protest of Israel not going to war with Gaza and right-wing leader Naftali Bennett threatened to pull his party from the coalition if he was not given the defense portfolio. However, Netanyahu outfoxed Bennett by claiming that it was too dangerous a time to go to elections and retained the defense portfolio for himself (Netanyahu is now Israel’s prime minister, defence minister, and foreign minister), utilizing a slim 51% ruling majority.

Until last week it looked like the coalition would hold together with its small majority. But following the Knesset’s inability to reach agreement on a bill dealing with military conscription of the ultra-orthodox, and, much more importantly, leaked information that the ministry of justice was recommending Netanyahu’s indictment on charges of bribery, on Monday Netanyahu announced “It’s too difficult [to pass laws], we need elections.” With that, the Israeli national election is scheduled to take place on April 9.

Much of the already up and running election coverage is focused on the coming indictment of Netanyahu. Will he be able to stave off the attorney general until April? If he is reelected, will he try to get his coalition partners to pass a measure forbidding the prosecution of a sitting prime minister?

Other election issues under discussion are the certain increase we will see in pandering to settlers. Netanyahu has already begun that.

Absent entirely from the election conversation is the Palestinian population living under Israeli control without voting rights.

20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian. They can vote in all Israeli elections and have representation in Knesset. However, these Israeli Palestinians represent only about one third of the Palestinians living under Israeli rule and military occupation.

Though the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are the official governments of the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, Israel is really in charge. Israel controls the borders, the currency, and the central bank. It collects taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), maintains the right to carry out military operations on Palestinian land, and controls the amount of freedom, or lack thereof, that Palestinians are granted.

Last year, Israel approved only 54% of the permits that residents of Gaza applied for to travel outside of Gaza for vital medical treatment. Reasons for denying people in Gaza necessary medical treatment are often absurd, such as denying travel because a relative at one time moved from Gaza to the West Bank without Israeli permission. Besides the right of travel, Israel regulates the fuel and building materials available to Gazans, and has at times even controlled the amount of food imports according to the number of calories Gazans should consume.

Israel controls not only the exterior borders of the West Bank but what goes on inside as well. While the Palestinian Authority manages such things as utilities and infrastructure, for much of the West Bank, Israel is the ultimate authority.  Israeli settler regional councils control 40% of West Bank land. Even in areas like Ramallah, supposedly under complete Palestinian Authority control, Israel reserves the right to enter the city at any time, to close streets and shops, burst into homes, and make warrantless arrests.

While the PA does maintain a judicial and penal system, one that itself is incredibly repressive, Palestinians are also subject to Israel’s military court system and such laws as Military Order 101, which bans peaceful protest. Though they are prosecuted in Israeli military courts and serve time in Israeli military prisons, Palestinians have no say over who is appointed to run the Israeli military, let alone the military courts.

Jerusalem was captured by Israel in 1967 and formally, and illegally, annexed in 1980. Common sense might follow that Israel would have then absorbed the East Jerusalem Palestinians, now numbering around 370,000, and made them Israeli citizens.

Rather than holding citizenship, however, Jerusalem Palestinians hold the status of permanent residents, allowing them to vote in municipal, but not national, elections. While this may at first seem a move in the right direction, a closer look reveals careful manipulation of demographics to ensure an at least a 70% Jewish majority at all times. Through such policies as exorbitant taxation, requiring constant proof of residency, and denial of family unification, since 1967 Israel has managed to revoke the residency of 14,595 Palestinian Jerusalemites. Still nervous about the demographics Israeli lawmakers in the Knesset – a body East Jerusalem Palestinians have no representation in – are currently working on annexation of three large settlement blocks surrounding Jerusalem to bring 140,000 Jewish Israelis setters into the municipality, while displacing the current Palestinian population.

Israel has no intention of ending its military occupation. 2019 will mark 52 years of occupation, including 12 years of siege of Gaza, and 26 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords that were supposed to create a Palestinian state. 600,000 Israeli citizens now live in the approximately 200 illegal Israeli settlements that cover the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Even since the announcement of new elections, 2,200 more settlement units have been advanced. While the two-state solution continues to be debated, the one apartheid state without voting rights for all, is barreling ahead.

A look at who is and isn’t allowed to vote in Israel/Palestine reveals Israel’s motivations:

Number of Jewish Israelis living in Israel proper, and East Jerusalem, and West Bank settlements:

6.589 million (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics)

Number of Palestinian citizens of Israel (Palestinians who can vote in national elections):

1.5 million (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and Jerusalem Municipality)

Number of Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza who cannot vote in Israeli national elections:

4.88 million (Palestinian Authority Central Bureau of Statistics)

As we continue to watch the indictment and campaigning dramas of Israel’s 2019 elections and we continue to hear the absurd label of Israel as a democratic state, let’s not forget that the right to vote is only granted to 60% of the total population and only one third of Palestinians who live under Israeli rule.

Israel Nothing but A ‘Paper Tiger’: US Analyst

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A former US army psychological warfare officer and counter-terrorism analyst described Israel as a ‘paper tiger’, adding that the regime will lose ‘catastrophically’ if it engages in any ground war.

“Netanyahu knows that if Israel engages in any ground war in Lebanon or Syria—or anywhere else for that matter—Israel will lose catastrophically and show the world it is nothing more than a ‘paper tiger’ and all bluster and threat with no ability to back them up,”Scott Bennett, from San Francisco, told Tasnim.

Scott Bennett is a US Army Special Operations Officer (11th Psychological Operations Battalion, Civil Affairs-Psychological Operations Command), and a global psychological warfare-counterterrorism analyst, formerly with defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. He received a Direct Commission as an Officer, held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI) security clearance, and worked in the highest levels of international counterterrorism in Washington DC and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. He has developed and managed psychological warfare theories, products, and operations for US Special Operations Command, US Central Command, the State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism, and other government agencies.

His educational background includes a Bachelor of Science in Advertising and Spanish Minor from San Jose State University in California, a Master of Arts in International Business and Public Policy from George Mason University in Virginia, and a Ph.D. (ABD) in Political Theory from the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. He currently resides in California.

The following is the full text of the interview.

Tasnim: Head of Israel’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party Avigdor Liberman resigned as defense minister, protesting Israel’s “too-soft policy” on Hamas. Liberman took his five-member party out of the ruling coalition and called for new elections. Leaving the government with 61 seats in the Knesset, barely a majority out of 120, this stirred discussion among politicians and observers about whether Israel would have to go to elections now or wait until November 2019, the requisite date according to law. Can Benjamin Netanyahu keep the coalition together? And if not, can he win the election and gain a fifth term as prime minister?

Bennett: As the Middle East wars in Syria and Yemen continue to sour against the West and degrade the reputation of Israel and Saudi Arabia in general, Benjamin Netanyahu will be increasingly seen as a liability and problem to the Israeli people, rather than an asset and solution. Besides the Zionist Mossad involvement with the 9/11 attacks against America, with the rise of the internet media has come the explosion of amateur photographic evidence showing Israel and Saudi Arabia’s particular genocidal wars against Yemen and Syria, the unlawful shooting down of Russian planes, and indiscriminate bombings and destruction of civilians by Western airstrikes. All of this footage has served to incline the public away from sympathizing or trusting the Israeli-Saudi public relations or propaganda campaigns. Additionally, Netanyahu and his wife are coming under increasing investigation for potential criminal irregularities and corruption charges associated with his tenure as Prime Minister. All of this is creating an atmosphere around Netanyahu that is becoming too toxic and odious for the public to endure, or Israel’s reputation to survive.

Tasnim: According to reports, Netanyahu has sought to avoid Gaza and prioritizes the status quo. He wasn’t looking for escalation or to use military force as an electoral prop, because if Israel got bogged down in an extended fight or Israeli civilians died as a result of Hamas retaliatory rocket fire, then his credibility would be shot. What do you think?

Bennett: Netanyahu knows that if Israel engages in any ground war in Lebanon or Syria—or anywhere else for that matter—Israel will lose catastrophically and show the world it is nothing more than a “paper tiger” and all bluster and threat with no ability to back them up.  We see Israel now losing aircraft in Syria, thanks largely to the Russian and Iranian assistance to the Syrian government.  Netanyahu also knows that the American people are quickly losing all support for America’s involvement in the Saudi-Israeli Middle East wars, or rather genocide, against Yemen and Syria.  This was demonstrated most recently by the US Senate voting to suspend military assistance to Saudi Arabia, and Senator Rand Paul’s speech on the Senate floor characterizing Saudi Arabia as evil, and Iran as not a threat to America.  Israel sees this as the end of its own “credit” and blank check which has been given it by Americans.  No more.

Tasnim: Why do you think Netanyahu does not favor early elections?

Bennett: Early elections of course will reflect all of these sentiments and would be a sure disaster that removes Netanyahu for corruption, graft, war crimes, and possibly treason. The people living in Israel also recognize that the days of endless war and expansionism of Israeli settlements is not a policy the world will allow any longer, and Netanyahu has endangered the lives of Israelis more than any other Prime Minister with this propaganda and lies against Iraq, Iran, and his manipulation of America into a series of wars that are terrible humanitarian disasters for Europe and the Middle East.

Tasnim: Contrary to popular belief, the United States isn’t a major factor in Israeli elections as the ruling coalition is breaking up and still no help from the US to the PM. What is your take on this?

Bennett: Trump recognizes that his foolish actions of having US troops in Syria and the firing of US cruise missiles at Syria in response to a “false flag” chemical attack which was blamed on President Assad, but which was later proven to be a lie and actually done by the White Helmets, is a war crime that may come back to haunt him.  He sees the Senate abandoning this war policy of supporting the Saudis and Israel because Yemen is turning into a humanitarian disaster, and this will become both Trump’s legacy and doom his presidency to one term if he does not remove himself.  Trump is now looking for ways to do that, while at the same time not “losing face” or disturbing his political base which unfortunately seems to be blindly and ignorantly pro-Zionist.  However, once again it seems this too is changing given the enormous destruction and failure of America’s policies in the Middle East, and Netanyahu is fast becoming the scapegoat for Americans to pin all of their blame upon.  As the approaching 9/11 legal investigations take place in New York, and the resulting Iranian legal filings to dismiss any legal cases and judgments against them for 9/11, we could easily see the emergence of new evidence, witnesses, and testimony which once and for all shows the Israeli Zionist involvement in this infamous war crime, and Netanyahu being arrested or killed for it.  The last 18 years of war were clearly started by the Zionist Likud party and betrayed the trust of the American people with lies and wars.  This is now becoming more and more apparent to Americans, and it is Netanyahu who is being seen as the conspirator and criminal who must not only be removed from political life but indeed removed from the earth for his acts of evil if the earth is to have peace.